


Empty Altar

by pagination



Series: The Endless Order [1]
Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent, The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-05
Updated: 2007-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 11:46:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagination/pseuds/pagination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lately, Bobby is finding it too easy to slip between personalities, to don mind after mind like an actor sliding into costume.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Altar

**Author's Note:**

> An old work from when I first started writing fanfic, in the middle of the worst influenza attack I've ever had. Writing while high on cough syrup might not have been the best decision ever.

Lately, Bobby is finding it too easy to slip between personalities, to don mind after mind like an actor sliding into costume. He has a catalog of them stored in his imagination, characters lined up like suits on a dresser's rack. Some are his own creation, and those are old friends, but others have lodged themselves indelibly in his skin, detritus from investigations when to crawl into another man's mind meant letting it crawl into his.   
  
He wonders sometimes which one is real, if one day he'll shrug into another personality and then find himself trapped, unable to leave. He imagines himself watching the world through alien eyes, no longer able to distinguish between his thoughts and another's, and wonders if part of him will be aware and howling in the dark, or if by some mercy madness will be gentle and kind, erasing even the memory of sanity until he is left in oblivion.   
  
On the good days, it frightens him, and he clenches his fingers tight on the slippery strings of self.  
  
On the bad days, like today, he can't make himself care.  
  
He walks down the alley with latex on his hands, searching for eyes and ears before the first canvass corrupts them. It smells of stale urine and staler beer, of late nights spent too far from home. Sweat mingles freely with fetid, sweet decay; the cardboard boxes piled high near the dumpster bear traces of food and other, less savory things. The sounds of patrolmen wax and wane behind him, voices melting together in the miracle of concrete acoustics. Alex's voice supersedes them, one more layer over strata of echoes. She is instructing them, she is berating them, she is winding their keys up to make them move. He could almost feel sorry for them. Echo was cursed, once upon a time. The thought pleases his notion of symmetry.   
  
A mongrel dog steps out of shadow and stops to stare at him with dark, cynical eyes. Somewhere in its past was a nobler breed, a German Shepherd strain still proud enough to stamp its offspring. Its descendant regards a Major Case Squad detective with skepticism, contrasting his appearance against his backdrop and finding him odd.  
  
Bobby drops to his haunches and watches the dog. Its coat is healthy; its weight is good. "Hey there, buddy," he greets in an overflow of affability. "Who do you belong to?"   
  
The dog tips its head and considers, judging, he thinks, the quality of his voice. It is street-wise, for all the care some master has given it. When he stretches his hand towards it, it eyes him with scorn. There are few animals so capable of communication as a dog. If it had the power of speech, it could not say more clearly,  _Are you kidding me?_  
  
His hand drops back to his knee. "You're right," he says. "I apologize."  
  
The dog sits down and returns to staring, only slightly appeased.  
  
Bobby rises to his feet and ambles further down the alley, the animal's watchful gaze like a knuckle digging into his skin. "I'm looking for a witness," he explains. "There was a shooting back that way, last night." He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, gesturing through bricks and mortar down two blocks, where policemen swarm like insects over an indifferent corpse.  
  
The dog's eyes flicker, following the motion. It yawns slowly and with great relish, showing a long, pink tongue lolling in a cage of yellow teeth.   
  
"It may not matter to you," Bobby says, "but it mattered to him."   
  
The dog blinks, licks its nose, then raises a hind leg to scratch busily behind his ear.   
  
"Thank you," Bobby says gravely. "I'll carry on, then." And he turns his attention outward.  
  
The piles of cardboard run along the entire wall of the alley, some collapsed for later claiming, others simply stacked one on top of the other like a child's building blocks. Something catches his eye, a white stripe against the darkness. He takes a step closer, and is paused by the hair-raising thrum of a growl.  
  
The dog is on its feet again, legs stiff, head lowering. The pointed ears flatten close to the skull. Bobby pauses, then slowly raises his hands. Memory pieces together the jigsaw of his brief glance: an arm stretched out against the concrete, slender and delicate, fine, pale skin smudged by patches of filth. "I just want to look," he tells the animal, his voice pitched low and quiet. Soothing. "I won't hurt her."  
  
The dog's head lowers further; the bushy tail curls under the hind legs. The tremor of its growl threads higher, sharper. Bobby slides his near foot further, gravel hissing under the hard sole. "I just want to look," he says again. "Your friend might be hurt. She might need my help. I'm just going to look," he says, and bends a little to stretch his arm towards the girl's.  
  
The growl cuts off. The dog straightens, looking disgusted that its bluff has been called, and ventures a few steps closer to investigate. It is tacit permission, if grudging. Goren drops to his haunches again and lifts cardboard away from the body underneath.   
  
She is young, but not too young; small, but not too small. The tangled hair is filthy, bubblegum pink under tangles and clinging debris. A single lock of it curls bright yellow across the high brow. He pushes away the last flat board ("Samuel Adams," it proclaims in stylized letters. "Boston Lager") to find shiny eyes regarding him, one green, one blue. Their colors are so bright, they burn.   
  
"I know you," she announces in a child's voice. "You're one of  _my_  fishies." The draped arm lifts to wiggle fingers at his head. "Hello, fishies."  
  
Her features are delicate, crafted out of porcelain. She has a doll's beauty, as seen through a malformed glass: just shy of perfect, just shy of right. The personality in the eyes is too brilliant to be sane. (When did he start thinking of sanity as dull?)  
  
He bends to one side to meet her gaze, forcing aside depression to offer a smile as a greeting. "Hello," he says gently. "I'm Bobby. What's your name?"  
  
"I have names." She rolls across concrete like a little hedgehog, curling up and unfolding to undulate against the wall. The slim arms wave, contorting into a knot behind her head. "They're wiggly things like coats and ties and you put them on and take them off and then, um, they're naked and you're all gone. There's a word I forget that means you. Do you know it?"  
  
"I might," Bobby says. "Do you want to come out and look for it?" He pushes away another piece of cardboard and extends his hand to the girl as he did to the dog, coaxing her to approach, to touch another human being. The dog sits down beside him and watches with interest, a spectator at a play of dubious quality.   
  
She is luminous against the shadows. Saints must look so, beholding the face of God. "I had a brother," she says wistfully. "He looked like you but he was red, and Barnabas ate from his fingers. He was there when everything went all strange and I don't remember but I was different then, different, different, all different, wasn't I?"  
  
"Maybe you were," he says, and leaves his hand open, waiting. "I don't remember. Is Barnabas your brother?"  
  
She stretches over the cardboard barrier to slide her fingers into his. They flutter in his grasp, impermanent as smoke. "Barnabas is a dog," she informs. "You have hands like paper. Are they bloody? Oh. Hello, Barnabas. He's cross but I mustn't say why. He looks after me, or I look after him, or we look after each other when one of us is lost."   
  
The dog glowers, but his tail thumps once against the ground.   
  
"You take good care of him," Bobby says, and draws her towards him. "He's--" He glances at the dog, which glances warily back. "He looks healthy. And happy." Reckless, he stretches his free hand towards Barnabas and spites the mongrel's dignity to fondle his head.  
  
Barnabas glares --  _If I weren't on my best behavior, copper,_  -- but submits with ill grace. A mordant wisp of humor touches Bobby: the conversation that is sane, he is having with a dog. The conversation he understands, he is having with an insane woman.  
  
She curls at his feet and twines her fingers with his. Her clothes are as haphazard as her eyes, a collage of thrift store acquisitions over torn fishnet stockings. "There are people in your head," she says, and lets her head fall to one side in a reflection of his. "Their necks are broken and they all cry. Don't cry, little people."   
  
Her hand reaches for his face, perhaps to pat it. He intercepts it on its path. His hand engulfs hers. "Were you here last night?" he asks. "Did you sleep, here?"  
  
Those astonishing eyes open wide, like little stars. "I was looking for my brother, but he went away. He's someone else now," she says.   
  
She smells of sweat and old leather. The scent steals into his imagination, setting it spinning into random association. "Was it dark? When you looked for him. Was it night?"   
  
"I was lost," she says, "but Barnabas found me. Barnabas is a  _good_  doggie. Hello, Barnabas." She squirms away and wriggles towards the dog. The mongrel endures her exuberant hug with far more patience than he tolerated Bobby's pat, though he turns a flat stare at him, daring him to comment.  _Not one word._  
  
Alex has sometimes looked at him like that.  
  
"Did we find my brother?" she asks. Barnabas allows her to peer in his ears. "Are you there, big brother?" she whispers.   
  
The dog sighs.  
  
Bobby watches her romp with the long-suffering mongrel, and feels a hand close around his throat. She is ephemeral and free, heart-stoppingly fragile; there is a familiarity about her that he refuses to acknowledge.   
  
Her forehead is marked by a smudge of dirt. The skin around it almost glows, it is so white by comparison. "You have a--" he begins, and points at his head before indicating hers. "On your face." She peers at him with owlish, mismatched eyes, then stares upward, engaging to see through the obstruction of her skull. He reaches into his pocket for his handkerchief and dampens it with his tongue before gesturing at her. "I can clean it for you," he says. "If you like."  
  
She does not move away, so he wipes the filth away for her, tenderly, carefully, aware of the hummingbird warmth of her, febrile even through the gloves. She regards him from underneath the fabric, interested and oblivious at once.  
  
"What's your brother's name?" he asks in a quiet voice, while she is compliant under his hands. "Maybe I could help you find him. We could find him. Together."  
  
"You can't find him if you  _look_  for him," she says kindly. "He's like me. Daniel Daniel Dream Del Del is me."  
  
"Daniel is your brother's name?"  
  
"Daniel," she echoes.  
  
"And your name." He rubs away a spot beside her mouth. He tickles her ear. She blinks. "You're-- Del?" he asks.  
  
"Del Del Delirium," she chants, and her smile is radiant, unshadowed by care.   
  
He smiles back down at her, conscious of the protective impulse, the inevitable yearning towards the damaged and the broken. "Del," he says. "That's a pretty name. Hello, Del."  
  
"Hello, Bobby," she says.   
  
"Were you here last night, Del?"  
  
"Barnabas says my sister was here," Del says, and screws up her face in ferocious thought. "I didn't see her. I was far, far, far away."  
  
"Your sister," he says. "Did your sister see something last night?"  
  
"My sister says we know everything, only some of us have forgotten except, um, she doesn't forget things. I know a word, it's a gunky word, like tears and water and gushy things." She inhales and holds her breath, cheeks puffing out.  
  
"Where is your sister now?"  
  
"Guess my word," Del demands. "It's a word for the thing that's, um, in your eye except it's not tears, but it's like water, except it isn't. It's 'vitreous humours.' Guess. Guess. Oh," she adds, crestfallen, and tangles her fingers into a knot before her face. "I guessed my word."   
  
He tips his head further, searching for the gaze under the barrier of her hands. One blue eye peers at him. He draws the green one out of hiding with his look. "Could I talk to her?" he asks gently. "Your sister. Can you show me where she is?"  
  
Del regards him with pity. "Silly," she says, and topples backward, her arms thrown akimbo.  
  
He looks down at her and his chest aches. For her or for himself: the one unleashed and buoyant in her liberty; the other clenched tight and fraying at the edges. He looks at a possible future and not for the first time, feels the seduction of freedom, wonders what it would be like to relax that hold and let the floodgates open. Imagines himself someone else, no longer Bobby Goren, escaping confines and responsibility and expectation to be simply his mother's son.  
  
From the near side of sanity, Del is a bird with a broken wing. From the far side of sanity, she is endless and beautiful. It hurts to watch her.   
  
She scrambles up while he is thinking, and thrusts her face at his before he can dodge. Her forehead touches his; her fingers cradle his face. Her breath is sweet and heady, like old wine, like flowers and wild things. "Don't be sad, Bobby," she says, and the tenderness is what his mother's once was, dusky warm and nostalgic. "It doesn't hurt sometimes, when it hurts, it won't, she won't hurt."  
  
Something slices through his heart, a blade so fine it parts the flesh without drawing blood. He wraps his hands around hers again and draws them away from his cheeks. His skin feels as though it's been bathed in ice. "I'm sorry," he says, and his tongue stumbles over the words. He isn't sure what he's apologizing for. "There are people, Del. People who can help you. We can look for your brother and your sister together, but there are people. We can find you a place to sleep, something to eat. You and Barnabas."  
  
He wants her to say yes. (He wants her to say no.) She watches him with her patchwork eyes and they are too wise and too kind for him to bear. She pities him. "You're not one of my fishies," she says sadly, and leans forward, balancing on her hands to kiss him on the cheek. The touch of her lips burns his skin. "Bye-bye, Bobby."   
  
She unfolds like a marionette, disjointed angles tugged by strings. Barnabas rises and shakes himself. One last glance at Bobby bids farewell --  _You and me both, brother_  -- and then the dog steps to take his place by Del's side. He fits there. He belongs.   
  
She spins away, feather-light and bouncing on the breeze.   
  
Bobby watches them go, his own eyes blind and filled with color. The grace of it steals his breath. It would be so easy to let go. It would be so easy. He could open his hands and let the strings fall free, let the careful stitching of his life come unraveled and undone.   
  
 _It would be so easy._  
  
Time stutters and stops.   
  
Inhales...  
  
"You find something?"  
  
...and exhales.  
  
Alex's voice. The alleyway is empty save for them. He starts, jerked back to the present, and finds her beside him, looking down at him.   
  
"What?" she asks, and regards him quizzically. "Is there something on my face?" Her fingers touch her nose, checking. Her eyes are wise and wry, bright with her own, pragmatic intelligence. (Why did he think that sanity could be dull?)   
  
"Nothing," he says, and feels the world slide back into its moorings. She is solid and present, reality carved out at his side. She fits there. She belongs. Gratitude bubbles like delight through his veins. "I didn't find anything."  
  
"That's got to be a first," she says. "Are you sick?"  
  
"I'm fine," he says, and stands. "Everything's fine."


End file.
